Run Away From Pain
by Ttestagr
Summary: Harry and Ginny's relationship hasn't been right since the funeral. Now after the war, they have one last chance to work through their issues and come together before her wedding


Running Away From Pain

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. He is Rowling's toy, not mine

Walking up the stairs, all Harry could think was that he didn't want to be there. He wanted nothing else than to get out of the Burrow. This supposed joyful occasion was going to be one of the most painful days in his life, even without all of the memories that the place brought up.

He had avoided this place and all thoughts of Ron, Hermione, and Ginny as best as he was able for the past three years. He had done a pretty decent job of it, at least until he got the invitation.

As he reached the third floor, he spied a plump redheaded woman with her back to him. He took a deep breath and walked towards the closest person he had to a mother.

"Hello Mrs. Weasley."

The woman spun around so fast her neck cracked. Her face lit into a wide smile, which he returned tentatively. "Oh Harry! You made it! We weren't sure if you would show or not. It's good to see you." Mrs. Weasley looked him up and down and frowned.

Harry broke into a grin. Mrs. Weasley still seemed to take his thinness as a personal insult.

"Are you eating enough dear? I know it's difficult to be out on your own. You are welcome to come anytime you fancy dear."

"I know. It's just…" He swallowed and stayed silent.

"I know dear." She pointed to the door, seeming solemn. "Ginny's right in here. She wanted to see you before…"

Harry gulped, and knocked on the door.

"Come in Harry."

He turned the doorknob and entered the room. He froze, not even noticing Mrs. Weasley reaching in and closing the door behind him.

She was in pure white dress robes, her waist long hair pulled over her shoulder. Her freckles seemed to stand out on her face. She looked horribly ill at ease. Harry gulped again.

"How'd you know it was me?"

"Harry, you're the only person who ever bothers to knock. I didn't think you'd be here."

Harry didn't want to be there. The only reasons he was attending were because he knew the rest of the family wanted him there, and he hoped this would give him some kind of closure so he could move on with his life. He doubted the second would happen though.

He wasn't going to say that though. "You're my oldest friend Ginny. I had to be here."

Ginevra Molly Weasley grinned weakly at him. "Even though it will hurt horribly. You're doing this for the rest of the family you noble git, don't lie to me. We've avoided each other for the past three years. It's been terribly uncomfortable for OUR family, and truthfully I'm quite tired of it myself."

He stayed silent.

She sighed, "I wanted to work this out with you before the…" She sighed again. "I want you to know why I tried to move on so quick after and didn't give you another chance. We left a lot of things unsaid." Before he could say anything she continued, "Well, at least I did."

"Both of us I think", he responded.

She nodded, "I didn't tell you why I wanted to go. I was a bloody coward. Too afraid of how you'd take it. I wanted to kill him ya know. But I knew you'd been taking lessons with Dumbledore and that you were the one that it was left to. After you left, I fought anyway, but hurting his Death Eaters wasn't watching and helping the bastard die."

Harry looked down. Out of all the people who had fought, she probably had the most personal reason to want to stop Voldemort. "When he possessed you."

"NO", she screamed. Harry backed up and hit the door. Tears were running down her eyes, and he listened for people coming. But no one did. It looked like everyone had left the Burrow except them.

"Then why Ginny? What happened?"

She glared at him. "I didn't remember right away, what happened after he came out of the diary. I…, I noticed in the h…, hospital wing. I was b…, bleeding", she paused and shook before settling herself and noticeably steeling herself for what she was going to say. "Down there you know. I've never told anybody, but when Dumbledore came down to see me in the Hospital Wing, he brought his pensieve. He offered to let me use it to see you save me, kinda to prove it to myself. I said okay, but I used it to look at what happened before you came instead."

At that point, Ginny cracked and started crying. Harry was stuck between standing there in horror at what she was telling him and going to go comfort her. He couldn't stand to see her like that, so he rushed over and hugged her.

They sat there for a few minutes while Ginny composed herself. After about ten, she continued. "He, he raped me. I was like a corpse and he still did it. I watched, I was screaming and didn't even realizing it until my voice gave out."

She started crying again, and Harry just held her, crying with her.

xxxxx

It took an hour for them to calm down and stop crying. Sitting there with her in his arms, Harry had never felt more horrible in his life. If he hadn't ignored her that year, he could have stopped it. He could have realized that she was being possessed and opening up the Chamber.

"I really wish I was there when you beat him Harry."

"I know Ginny."

"I found this really painful castration curse that would have been perfect."

He looked down at her in surprise. She conjured a hanky and used it to clean her face. She looked at him oddly.

"I'm sorry; I left some of my bogeys on your robes." She picked up her wand and gave it a flick. "_Scourgify_."

He looked down at his newly clean robes, and wondered what he could say.

She continued for him. "I was angry with you. He took my innocence when I was eleven and when it came down to killing him, I was left behind again. Ever since he came back, I wanted to kill him to help forget. When I didn't have that, well I was an idiot. I was helping to fight, and I tried to forget by using boys." She grinned cynically. "I'm just glad that mum never found out that her ickle Gin-Gin turned into such a slag."

"You are not a slag!" She looked at him in surprise. "You were hurting, and it was my bloody fault! I knew you wanted to help me go after him, but I assumed I knew why and didn't ask!" He slumped down. "I didn't even tell you the real reason I didn't take you with me.

She looked at him so fiercely he was surprised that she wasn't attacking him.

"What."

He slumped down a bit more. "When I told you I couldn't bring you with me because I couldn't bear to see you hurt or killed, that wasn't the full reason."

"What was then Harry?"

He looked at her, and noticed a definite resemblance to her mum.

"I never told you what my life was like before Hogwarts."

She interrupted, "What does that have to do with it?"

"I need to tell you to explain how I was thinking." He took a breath and rushed on. "Until a few weeks before I left for first year, I lived in the cupboard under the stairs. My relatives starved me, and beat me occasionally when I acted 'oddly'. The one thing I wished for was for someone to come and take me away. Hagrid made my wish come true. He brought me into the wizarding world. I was famous though, The-Boy-Who-Lived, for the same reason I was miserable for the first ten years of my life. I hated that as much as anything. It was part of my entire life too, every year at school all of those adventures were because I was the Boy-Who-Lived. Sixth year though, I got to really know you, became real friends with you and it had nothing to do with all that. No one trying to kill me, no adventures, we just got along. Then we got together. For the first time in my life I had something that was just Harry. That's why, at the funeral, I told you it was like something out of someone else's life. I was a normal boy, with a wonderful girlfriend. That's when I fell in love with you."

He looked at her, beautiful in wedding robes not for him and felt dead inside.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I was sixteen and a prat. I didn't realize then that was what I was feeling."

She smacked his arm, a miniscule smile on her face. "You are a prat."

He nodded, and continued with his explanation. "When it came down to Voldemort, I was willing to die to beat him. I knew some of us would." He froze as memories of his two best friends came to him. He wiped away a tear. "I loved all of them, and I would have given up almost anything to keep them safe. But beating Voldemort was more important and we all knew it."

"I know."

Harry paused, he didn't want to talk about Ron and Hermione, but he had to get her to understand. "Ron and Hermione were the two best friends a bloke could have." Ginny looked positively gobsmacked by his bringing them up. "But our friendship was so involved with Voldemort already that almost all of the important points of it were about dealing with him or his plans. From the beginning all three of us had an understanding that we had to beat him regardless of what happened to any of us. They died to make sure that we won and I let them. I wasn't willing to let you."

She was absolutely gobsmacked now.

"We HAD to beat him. What we had had nothing to do with him. If you were there, I wouldn't sacrifice you. I would have let him win. That's why I left you behind.

Ginny looked defeated. "You should have told me."

He looked at her grimly. "I know. I didn't want you to know I was that weak, especially since I knew you wanted him dead, if not why."

He looked at his watch. "You're getting married soon Ginny. I want you to be happy and he's a decent bloke. That's enough."

He turned around, opened the door and walked out.

xxxxx

Waiting there for her to start her march felt like the longest wait of his life. The crowd was restless, waiting for the bride. Harry himself felt like doing violence upon himself. He still was as much of an idiot as he was when he was seventeen. Why did he end it like that? He should have fought for her.

He stopped that train of thought. He lost her years ago. Today had given him some small measure of peace though. He made his mistakes and couldn't change them. The talk they just had gave him hope though. In his head at least, they had come to an understanding. Hopefully, he would get one of his closest friends back.

Muttering from the crowd caught his attention and he turned around. His breath caught as a tall, thin redheaded man walked down the aisle alone. What happened? Harry watched Arthur go up to the groom and whisper to him frantically. The man's face lost all color. He shoved Mr. Weasley out of the way and ran back to the house. Harry still hadn't breathed, and felt hope for something that he had none for in a very long time. A monster stirring after a three year hibernation. He ruthlessly squashed it down. Taking a breath, he scanned the frantic crowd and knew he had to get out. He couldn't deal with this, with everyone's wondering.

In the confusion, he wasn't noticed slipping away towards the orchard that hid the families Quidditch pitch. He sat down and relaxed, and started going through his Occlumency exercises.

xxxxx

It was dark when Harry was interrupted by a flowery smell he would recognize anywhere.

"Did you actually expect me to be able to go through a wedding after all that?"

He turned around and just looked at her. Her hair was loose, and she was dressed casually in an ill-fitting t-shirt and cutoff jeans.

"What happened?"

"I did a lot of thinking after you left. After you killed Tom, I was hurting emotionally. I've spent the last few years running away from you and that pain. This marriage was just a salve, something that gave me a little bit of comfort. I realized that, and I'm not willing to put myself in that kind of relationship for the rest of my life."

"So what will you do now?"

She shrugged. "I'll get to know you again. I do love you Harry, but there's been too much anger to just go jumping into your arms like some story. I want to work through it, deal with it, and get on with my life." She looked small for a moment. "I want to get to know if it will be possible for you to be there with me."

With a roar, the beast in him exploded. He smiled at her and introduced himself, "Hi, I'm Harry James Potter." He stuck out his hand.

She blinked a few times before grinning, "Ginevra Molly Weasley."

AN: This isn't the type of fic that I normally read or write, but I was lying down right after I woke up this morning and this is what my mind thought up. So I wrote it. I hope that it is enjoyed.


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